Tuesday, March 31, 2015

In what has been called the "Catholic moment" in America, in the late 1940s and 1950s, Catholics were admonished from pulpits to "live the faith" and "set an example" for others.

Public lives were to reflect moral beliefs. Christians were to avoid those "living in sin." Christians who operated motels and hotels did not rent rooms to unmarried couples.

Fast forward to 21st-century America.

Indiana just enacted a law, as have 19 other states, to protect the rights of religious people to practice their beliefs in how they live their lives and conduct their businesses.

And the reaction? Nearly hysterical.

The head of the NCAA, the founder of Apple, chief executives of SalesForce and Yelp, Martina Navratilova, Larry King, Miley Cyrus and other celebrities are rushing to express their shock.

Boycotts of Indiana are being demanded. Tweeted Hillary on her now-empty server: "Sad this new Indiana law can happen in America today. We shouldn't discriminate against [people because] of who they love."

The culture war has come to Indiana, and all these folks are eager to be seen as standing tall with the LGBT revolution. But what are they actually saying?

Are they saying that Christian bakers, photographers and florists may not refuse to provide their services at same-sex weddings? Are they saying that hotel owners who deny rooms to unmarried couples or for homosexual liaisons should be prosecuted for being faithful to their moral code?

How are we supposed to punish Christians for sinning against liberalism? Will jailing be necessary, or caning, or just depriving them of their livelihood?

The Hillarys of our world have a right to call such folks bigots and homophobes. But should they have the power to punish people for acting on their religious beliefs?

Isn't the First Amendment supposed to protect this right?

Whatever became of the conservatives' Free Society?

Initially, under Obamacare, Christian colleges and businesses were forced to provide employees with birth control and abortion-inducing, morning-after pills. The regime was ordering religious people to behave in ways that were abhorrent to them and contravened the teachings of their faith.

Like Shariah Law, liberalism imposes its values upon nonbelievers and punishes noncompliance.

Says Mayor Edwin Lee, who has banned city-funded trips to Indiana, "We stand united as San Franciscans to condemn Indiana's new discriminatory law, and will work together to protect the civil rights of all Americans."

But the "discriminatory law" that has the mayor upset does not discriminate against anyone.

It merely guarantees the freedom of religious people who believe homosexuality is wrong to not have to be associated with individuals or events that celebrate it.

The mayor may not like how people exercise their freedom. Does his dislike justify depriving them of that freedom?

The gay rights community seems to have advanced from asking for tolerance of their lifestyles — to demanding punishment for those who refuse to accept its moral equality.

Why do they care that a handful of Christians still reject their truth? Are they so insecure in their convictions about themselves that they must have conformity? Must all kneel before their Golden Calf?

Like all of us, the mayor has a right not to associate with people who use obscene or racist language, or whose behavior is boorish, or whose politics he detests.

To the mayor, it appears commendable for him not to be associated with Indiana because of its values. Why is it then intolerable for Christians not to be associated with gay events because of their values? A little double standard there, Mr. Mayor?

What the Indiana issue is really all about is the replacement of Christian values with secular values as the operating premises of society.

And the hallmark of our new society is intolerance of those who reject the revolution. It is ever so with revolutions.

In 1964, across the bay from San Francisco, the Free Speech Movement was born at Berkeley. Students demanded the freedom to say what they believed, no matter how objectionable to the majority.

Soon, dirty language became common on radio, cable and in film. Pornography was declared constitutionally protected. Larry Flynt was the First Amendment hero. Rap singers used the crudest of terms for women and the N-word for each other. A new freedom was born.

That is, up until two soused freshmen from Sigma Alpha Epsilon began a chant on a bus with high school seniors that used the N-word.

Then the air raid sirens went off. Mass protests were held on campus. Students told how sickened they were to TV cameras descending on campus. Oklahoma University President David Boren expelled the evildoers. The frat house was shut down and fumigated.

An investigation of SAE nationally is being conducted. Editorials blazed, though the U.N. Security Council has yet to table a resolution of condemnation.

According to the Washington Post, "after canvassing more than 300 homes and reviewing physical, ballistic, forensic, medical and crime-scene evidence" and examining "Wilson's personnel records, audio and video recordings," Justice concluded Wilson told the truth about what happened that Saturday in Ferguson.

Officer Wilson is innocent of the endless libels and slanders in the press and on television, and by street demagogues and the pack of liars who, under oath, told a St. Louis County grand jury that Brown had his hands up, crying, "Don't shoot!" when Wilson cut him down.

The liars, however, will not be called out, nor will the perjurers be prosecuted. For Holder says, in the words of the Post, that "the discrepancy" between what happened and what the liars testified to "was due, in part, to a deeply rooted pattern of racial bias in the police department that had left the Ferguson community polarized."

Holder is saying that we must cut slack for folks who lied to get an innocent cop indicted for murder, because their community had been badly treated by Ferguson cops and courts.

And what about the nights and days of rioting, looting, arson and anarchy in Ferguson and beyond following the death of Brown?

Holder has an explanation for that, too.

"[A]mid a highly toxic environment, defined by mistrust and resentment [of police], stoked by years of bad feelings and spurred by illegal and misguided practices, it is not difficult to imagine how a single tragic incident set off the city of Ferguson like a powder keg."

This, said Holder, was the root of the rage in Ferguson.

Sorry, Eric, that dog won't hunt.

When a powder keg goes off, there is a single explosion. And one can understand how, in the first or second night after the death of Michael Brown — originally seen as a shooting by a berserk cop who unloaded his weapon in broad daylight on a teenager — this could set folks off.

But this lawlessness went on, week after week after week, and involved not only rioting and rampages in Ferguson, but the blockage of streets, malls and stores, hundreds of miles away, up to Christmas.

And this rampant criminality was accompanied by the complicit silence of the president of the United States and his attorney general.

When, ever, did either come down hard on the hoodlum element that exploited Ferguson?

Yet, while Wilson may be innocent, says Holder, the Ferguson police department and courts are steeped in white racism.

The proof of this? Though African-Americans are 67 percent of the population of Ferguson, they account for 93 percent of all arrests.

But these figures prove nothing.

According to the FBI crime statistics of recent years, though African-Americans are 13 percent of the population, they account for one-third to one-half of all violent crimes.

In Washington, D.C., African-Americans are half the population. But they are responsible for a huge percentage of all the robberies, rapes, assaults and murders, and especially the interracial crimes of violence.

What should it be any different in Ferguson?

And if Ferguson is such a racist hellhole, why have black folks moved there from St. Louis, and why did only 6 percent of African-Americans go to the polls in the election prior to the Brown shooting?

Does that sound like a community on fire with resentment over a racist city regime?

As evidence of the racism in the Ferguson Police Department, Justice produced, seven, count 'em, "seven racist e-mails," said the Post. Here, to the Post, are three of the most horrible:

"A November 2008 e-mail, for instance, stated that President Obama could not be president for very long because 'what black man holds a steady job for four years?' Another e-mail described Obama as a chimpanzee. An e-mail from 2011 showed a photo of a bare-chested group of dancing women apparently in Africa with the caption: 'Michelle Obama's High School Reunion.'"

This is it? The FBI plowed through eight years of emails from the Ferguson P.D. and came up with this? And for this, Ferguson goes into the history books alongside the Sand Creek and Fort Pillow massacres?

In its March 5 editorial, "A Chilling Portrait of Ferguson," The New York Times bewails the "entrenched racism in the Ferguson police force."

But the real story of Ferguson is the entrenched bigotry that propelled a mob-like rush to judgment by journalists and race hustlers that ruined the life of an honest cop who did his duty and told the truth.

In this version of "To Kill a Mockingbird," Darren Wilson is Tom Robinson — the victim of anti-white racism — and St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch is Atticus Finch.